2024 Chinese GP Sprint Race & Qualifying Preview
2024 Chinese GP Sprint Race & Qualifying Preview
Now, it is time for James Punt’s 2024 Chinese GP Sprint Race and qualifying preview. You can check out his outright, team by team preview by clicking here.
2024 Chinese GP Sprint Race + Qualifying
Friday’s Free Practice and the Sprint Qualifying was entertaining, but not very enlightening.
Free Practice saw the teams trying to gather as much data as possible, so as to be able to find a good set up. As such, it is hard to read too much into it. Lance Stroll was fastest, Alonso nineteenth as he was gathering hard tyre data. That sort of summed up the session. Different drivers running different programs and it is hard to glean much from it.
There was also a red flag in the session, caused by a trackside fire. It was very unusual as the grass/soil should have been damp after a lot of rain on Wednesday.
It is believed that it was caused by marsh gas reaching the surface and being ignited by sparks from the cars’ skid blocks. The fire reignited again during qualifying but was quickly extinguished. It would not be a surprise to see it happen again over the weekend. That is a new one.
Sprint Qualifying
The Sprint Qualifying started on a dry, but still low grip, circuit. Q1 was dry but some rain started to fall in Q2. George Russell was caught out having not set a time while it was dry and when he tried a fast lap, the rain was falling. He missed the cut and starts the Sprint race in eleventh place.
In Q3 the track was fully wet. It was cold and the new tarmac meant the water was sitting on top of the oily surface. Cars were going off the track and it was a matter of trying to get some heat into the tyres and not crashing. A bit of a lottery.
Verstappen went off and could only manage fourth place on his sole timed lap, Leclerc went off and hit a barrier, but no real damage was caused. He ended up seventh, two places behind his teammate Sainz, again.
Norris Fastest
Lando Norris set the fastest lap, had it deleted, Hamilton was on pole position, but Norris suddenly reappeared at the top of the timesheets as his lap time was reinstated.
Normally, if you leave the track on the final corner, the driver’s lap time for that lap AND the following lap are deleted. But, for this race, that rule was not in the race directors notes. A bit strange, but the logic was that no advantage could be gained by going off on the last corner, on this track. Fair enough.
Norris is not particularly optimistic of winning the Sprint race, if it is dry. In the wet, game on. Hamilton said as much himself. In the dry, he expects Red Bull and Ferrari to pass them easily. Fernando Alonso said the Aston Martin was not ‘super-fast’ in the dry and clearly, the outcome of the Sprint race is very much weather dependent.
The forecast says we can expect a cloudy, warmer day tomorrow. There is a 25% chance of drizzle and temperatures of 22 degrees. That means a 75% chance that it will be dry.
Summary
It was hard to learn too much thanks to the sprint race format and also that the latter half of qualifying was affected by rain. It looks like the rest of the weekend should be dry, but with a lot of cloud about, some light rain cannot be ruled out. The track surface is low grip in the dry and very low grip when wet.
We have two sessions tomorrow. First is the Sprint race which starts at 11.00 am local time. After that, the teams can work on the cars and set them up for the Grand Prix qualifying session, which starts 15.00 local time.
Red Bull Up Against It?
The only thing I will say about tomorrow’s qualifying session is that Red Bull might be up against it. Track temperature is not going to be high thanks to the cloud cover. The track surface is low on grip.
Red Bull has a car that is very kind on its tyres over a race distance, but because of that, it can take them longer to get the tyres warmed up in the desired operating window. A cool, low grip track does them no favours in qualifying.
Ferrari have had three second places in qualifying so far in 2024. They do not have the qualifying pace they had last year, but the car is quick and it does still seem to get the tyres fired up a little better than the Red Bull, at least for Sainz.
Leclerc admits that he is having to work on how to get his tyres in the right window on his out laps. It is enough to have a small e/w bet on Carlos Sainz for tomorrow’s qualifying session.
2024 Chinese GP Qualifying Tip: 0.5 point Carlos Sainz to be fastest qualifier @ 11.00 with Ladbrokes
Before we get to the Grand Prix qualifying session, we have the Sprint race to consider. I will start from the point of view that it will be dry. The forecasts did suggest that Friday was the most likely day to see rain, that it may fall again overnight, but should peter out early on Saturday morning.
It isn’t easy trying to predict what is likely to happen after what we saw on Friday. However, it is safe to assume that the two fastest cars are Red Bull and Ferrari.
The fact that we have a McLaren and a Mercedes on the front row, and an Aston Martin third, was a function of a cold, wet qualifying session. Those cars are not so kind to the tyres over a race distance, but they would get a bit more temperature into them in cold, wet conditions.
Tyre Degradation
A short sprint race will not expose their tyre degradation as much as a full race distance, but I expect Red Bull and Ferrari to be up to speed within a couple of laps. Down that very long straight, with DRS into a hairpin, a faster car will be hard to keep behind. That is a very important part of the lap and we should expect Red Bull, with its very powerful DRS, to be mighty there.
Verstappen is the 1.66 favourite to win the sprint race, Norris 5.00, Carlos Sainz 13.00, Perez 13.00, Hamilton 15.00, Alonso 17.00 and Leclerc 26.00.
Verstappen is just 1.25 to win the actual GP. The oddsmakers are saying that because Verstappen starts from the second row, his chances in the Sprint are significantly reduced. They are reduced, but by that much? In the wet maybe, but I think it’s going to be dry.
The Red Bull is a beast on a long straight and for a change, Verstappen will have DRS working in his favour. When he is leading, which is most of time, he doesn’t get to deploy his DRS. Starting from fourth, he will have it at his disposal when he attempts to pass the three cars ahead of him. Three cars that are slower in the dry.
2024 Chinese GP Sprint Race Tip: 2 points Max Verstappen to win the Chinese GP Sprint race @ 1.66 with Betfred, SpreadEx
I was considering Carlos Sainz as an e/w outright bet, but I will play it more cautiously and just back him to finish on the podium. He has not finished worse than third place in his three races so far, and he should be able to make up a couple of places on the slower cars in front.
2024 Chinese GP Sprint Race Tip: 1 point Carlos Sainz to finish on the Sprint podium @ 2.00 with Boylesports, Ladbrokes
Alpine have brought a reasonably big upgrade for this race, but they only have enough parts for one car, and Ocon is the chosen driver. He was seventh fastest in FP1 but just lost out to his teammate in Sprint qualifying.
Gasly says the upgrades on his teammate look like a step in the right direction and he is looking forward to getting his at the next race. It should be that Ocon has a slightly quicker car at his disposal, and hopefully he can convert that into finishing ahead of his teammate in the Sprint.
